At CNN, Imagining an Absurd Iranian/ISIS Alliance
The suggestion that Iran might be sharing intelligence with ISIS is absurd. ISIS’s stance toward Shia Islam, the kind practiced by most Iranians, is openly genocidal.
Jim Naureckas
Action Alert: Asking Questions of Government Figures Is Not a Crime
Please ask West Virginia to respect the First Amendment and drop all charges against reporter Dan Heyman.
Action Alert: NYT Misleads on Children’s Pre-Existing Conditions
The New York Times, in its obsession with reporting that the truth is somewhere in the middle no matter what the facts say, is now downplaying the risk to sick children posed by elimination of the Affordable Care Act.
Three Reasons Bret Stephens Should Not Be a NYT Columnist—and the Real Reason He Is One
The orthodoxy on the New York Times op-ed page isn’t “liberalism”; Bret Stephens is the third representative of his ideological niche, the anti-Trump conservative, to currently have a home there.
At Reuters, ‘Not Refuting’ Is the Same as ‘Seeing’
Maybe next time Reuters could wait for a somewhat stronger suggestion—involving actual evidence, perhaps—before running a story that could inflame the new Cold War.
Giving NY’s Governor a $783,000 Bribe Is Business as Usual for Rupert Murdoch
Murdoch has long made a practice of funneling large payments to influential politicians via HarperCollins book contracts, in what amounts to a system of legalized bribery.
The Essential Pundit Take: ‘Trump Became President’ by Bombing Syria
Note the assurance with which Zakaria insists that a military attack on a sovereign state, unauthorized by the United Nations and unjustifiable in terms of self-defense, signifies a new respect on Trump’s part for “global norms” and “international rules.”
The Antarctic Ice Shelf Is Breaking Up–and USA Today Tells Us to ‘Chill Out’
USA Today’s headline writer picks up on notes of reassurance in an article on a global warming disaster.
WaPo Spun Scoop to Shelter Sessions
The problem was not that Sessions “did not disclose” his meetings with Ambassador Sergey Kislyak; it’s that he lied about them under oath.
Advocate of Saddam/Al Qaeda Conspiracy Will Save Us From Fake News
The Weekly Standard, lest we forget—as Rutenberg clearly has—was second to no publication in using shoddy journalism to sell a war that would leave countless hundreds of thousands dead.
NYT Sees Fed on Collision Course With Trump—for Doing What Trump Said to Do
The problem with the account by New York Times Washington correspondent Binyamin Appelbaum is that the Fed is doing exactly what Trump, throughout the 2016 campaign, repeatedly demanded that it do.
WaPo Spins Its Scoop to Minimize Damage to Sessions
The Washington Post, which broke the Jeff Sessions/Russian envoy story, is framing it to minimize political damage to the attorney general. The problem is not that Sessions “did not disclose” his meetings with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak; it’s that he lied about them under oath.
Trump Didn’t ‘Revoke’ Protections for Trans Students—Because He Can’t
Trump does not have the power to unilaterally change what rights transgender students have. These rights derive from Title IX, a federal law passed in 1972, that bars discrimination based on gender in publicly funded schools, along with a series of federal court rulings,
Are Liberals Helping Trump? Not Much, Apparently
approximately 25 million US adults who have started disapproving of Trump’s month-old presidency, and about 12 million who have stopped supporting it. It’s possible that without Trump’s critics’ “moral Bolshevism,” even more people would have joined the opposition. But if liberals are helping Trump, they’re obviously not helping him very much.
A Lesson Media Missed About the Dangers of Scapegoating
An attack on a Canadian mosque could have provided a critical lesson in the fallacy, and the danger, of singling out particular categories of people. That is, if US media had paid more than passing attention to the story.
To Build an Autocracy, First Build an Oligarchy
In “How to Build an Autocracy,” David Frum leaves out the first step, which is to create an oligarchy that chooses to serve an economic elite rather than improving the lives of the majority–leaving the public ready to listen to a demagogue who promises to look out for them.
Media Need to Treat Presidential Lawbreaking as a Matter of Fact
Saying that the president is breaking the law feels like taking sides, whereas asserting that “the president has broad legal authority to restrict immigration” seems like the kind of thing a “neutral” journalist would say.
First They Came for the Immigrants—and NYT Said People Should Anonymously Inform on Them
“The Ethicist” offers some Trump era advice: If someone confides to you about an immigration violation, he says, you should report them to the government.
NYT Amazed That Republicans Are Embracing Republican Ideas
The New York Times seems intent on exaggerating the ideological space between Donald Trump and traditional Republican Party policies. The latest example is a piece that expresses amazement that Republicans in Congress seem to accept Trump’s ideas—most of which are longstanding GOP policies.
NYT Apologies Depend on Whose Lives Are Distorted
The New York Times didn’t apologize when the paper was criticized for misrepresenting the lives, not of couples in an upper-middle-class suburb, but of impoverished food-stamp recipients.
